Technology eats Culture for Breakfast (English Version)

How do we actually measure whether our society can still keep up with digitalization? I do not mean the equipment with technological hardware or infrastructure, but the mindset; a willingness to change and especially the

How do we actually measure whether our society can still keep up with digitalization? I do not mean the equipment with technological hardware or infrastructure, but the mindset; a willingness to change and especially the understanding of why one should do that. In the last 25 years so much has changed that there hardly any area of life remained untouched.

Many of these developments, especially the first ones, were well understood for most people. A cell phone? Of course, so I am also accessible on mobile. A computer? Yes, it actually helps me with my work. A navigation device? Super, finally no complicated folding maps anymore. Do you understand what I mean?

However, we have now come to a point where digital technology evolves so quickly that I have the feeling that many of us no longer can quite keep up with it. Not because they do not want to, but because nobody explains to them why they should do it and what benefits they get from it.

We live in an age in which, on one hand, we have the extreme digital ones and on the other hand, those who have understood the principles, but now face the risk of getting stuck on the way forward. Very few of them are fundamentally opposed to change in their innermost being – I am convinced that you can take each one of them on the journey, if one really explains the meaning to them.

Geeks like us do not need that. That is clear. We run after every new development just because it is new – nobody has to explain any meaning to us at first. But we are not the whole of society and also not its ideal image – even if we like to see it that way every now and then. We are ambassadors, who recognize and communicate the meaning of all the hype. Especially in large companies this still happens all too rarely – this will become more apparent to us in the coming years.

It is a question of cultural change and no longer so much of technological development. We are at a point where technology will always be able to run away from the cultural development. The technological development, however, will definitely not slow down on the contrary. Therefore we must be careful that it will not pass the cultural development.